LIKE MOTHER, LIKE DAUGHTER AS McCOLGAN STRIKES GOLD
SOME 32 years after the last of her mother’s two Commonwealth Games titles, Eilish McColgan contributed another to the family business of distance running glory with a thrilling gold medal in the 10,000metres final. It has been a rough year for the 31-year-old Scot, who was dealt a difficult bout of Covid in April and then saw her World Championship tilt ‘turn to s***’ last month because of a hamstring injury. But how that evaporated last night as she outran Kenya’s Irene Cheptai off the final bend to score the first major win of her career. As she crossed the line the crowd threw up the loudest roar heard at an athletics event in this country since Super Saturday at the London Olympics.
After being mobbed by her mother, the former world champion Liz Nuttall, McColgan said: ‘I couldn’t have asked for more — my family were here, the crowd on that last 100m… well it was vibrating through my own body. ‘Without the crowd, I wouldn’t have finished that. I wanted it so badly. These are my fourth Commonwealths and I have come sixth every time — I was ready to win the medal. I desperately wanted gold down that last 200m. It’s mad.’ Nuttall, the champion of the same discipline in 1986 and 1990, said: ‘As a mother, not even as a coach, to witness your daughter winning this race is amazing. And to win it in the same event I won it in. She ran the race I always knew she was capable of running. It was amazing to watch, very nerve-wracking. ‘This has been a long time coming for Eilish. She put it all together. I know the hard work she does. It’s fantastic it has all come together and she’s won.’